The death of a community

Today, Central Falls' state-appointed receivor, Judge Bob Flanders, announced the city will file for bankruptcy. Through the bankruptcy process, the city will break its contracts and covenants with past, present and future city workers.

Flanders is the third receivor to run the city since the state took over the city 14 months ago. He and his two predecessors have already charged the now officially bankrupt city $570,000 for their services - which essentially consist of driving the hearse.

The first receivor, attorney John Savage, collected $250,000 for his stint. The second receivor, Judge Mark Pfieffer collected just under $200,000. Judge Flanders has already been paid $120,000 and is due to collect $130,000 under the terms of his contract.

NOTE to bankruptcy court - if you're going to void municipal contracts, make Judge Flanders' $130,000 sweetheart deal first on the list.


My family has lived in Central Falls for generations. I was born in Central Falls and went to high school there. I was in Central Falls today, visiting my sister and saw all the TV trucks surrounding City Hall with their satellite feed booms fully extended, waiting like vultures for scraps of putrid news.

Central Falls has a long history as a community that was never intended to succeed. It was carved off from Lincoln over a century ago as a working class ghetto. It was where the mill owners stashed their immigrant workers in one concentrated place so they could be carefully controlled.

It never had an economy. It never had a tax base. Its biggest employer is a private prison which is itself teetering on the brink of financial ruin.

It has street after street of cramped together triple-deckers filled with apartments crammed with low-wage workers struggling to survive. It has bars and churches and more troubles than a town like Charlestown could ever dream of.

But for generations, it muddled along anyway. The current town motto is - and I am not making this up - "A City with a Bright Future." The only surprise is that it took this long before the city's long struggle for pride and Independence came to an end.

National Guard fires tear gas, then bullets

One of the few things that have happened in Central Falls that have earned it a place in the history books - aside from today's Day of Ignominy - is the 1934 "Saylesville Massacre." During the Great Textile Strike of 1934, those ghettoized workers of Central Falls took part in the struggle. But that was not to be tolerated, so Governor Theodore Francis Green (as in T.F. Green Airport) dispatched the National Guard who fired into an unarmed crowd of strikers and their families, killing four of them.

There is extraordinary newsreel footage of the battle between the Guard and the strikers in the streets of Central Falls filmed by British Pathe (click here).

The only practical solution now is for Central Falls to be merged with a neighboring community. Probably Pawtucket, since I doubt Lincoln will take CF back. We will have to pay Pawtucket to make this deal work. It's not so terrible. There are many examples all across Rhode Island of small communities that have been merged into larger communities and still kept their identity (like Carolina, Shannock, Kenyon or Bradford).

But there is little honor or pride in these events. We let the hard-working people of Central Falls dangle in the wind for generations and now we treat them like second-class citizens. I fervently hope things will be better for the people of the future Central Falls neighborhood of Pawtucket.

Author: Will Collette